The Greater Demon Xarakk
| Desc = A multiplayer battle against a powerful demon | Reset = variable, some number of hours | Leave = yes | Multi = yes | Diff = variable, up to about 9+ at MR 175 | Req = | Notes = the first multiplayer battle introduced }} Description It seems that the disciples of Joloreth have taken a particular interest in something in the shattered remains of the once-great Vorenthan temple... Rewards Experience rewarded for participating in this scenario is available in the "windowless building with the blue door" in Hawklor, Talinus, or Trithik. See below for more information about how much you can get. Dated warning Almost everything about multiplayer scenarios have been changed and tweaked several times since their launching. All information contained on this page must be taken with a grain of salt, since it may probably be outdated. You can check the very long thread about it in the forum, which explains almost everything in detail (if you're in the mood of browsing over 60 pages). Since there has been so many changes, there are many conflicting reports. The ruins Map of the ruins *You enter from the South. *Northwest and West (Red): Hall of Three Knights *Northeast and East (Yellow): Ruins of an ancient building. Encounter with the *Northwest and Northeast (or vice versa) (Green): Resting spot. You can recover 25 SP and 2 NV for every 5 seconds spent resting here. * From the resting spot: North (Black): Ring of obelisks, where the battle takes place. * You can hear the din of the battle from any point of the ruins. Random encounters in the ruins As you explore the ruins, you can encounter several enemies: * * * * * * If you flee from any of these, you end up at the beginning of the area (at the arch). The Greater Demon Xarakk This is the first multiplayer battle in Sryth, where you can see for yourself other characters in action, and team up with them to end the menace of the Greater Demon Xarakk, a servant of the dark god Joloreth. WARNING: This is an extremely dangerous fight. Adventurers should carry a Quickstone with stored 20's, the Demonscourge, and 3 Blessings of Protection, and watch closely their SP at all times. High values of NV and SP, and a minimum of MR 110 with the Demonscourge are recommended. Also it's recommended to have at least one not-resistable combat power at 60+. Destruction gets resisted frequently. Even with that, the demon can kill you with a certain ease in a little stroke of bad luck (it has special attacks over 60+ points of damage). Battle mechanics Before the battle This event resets randomly after the end of each battle. The actual reset time is random, and can be from little more than 1 hour up to 8 hours. Shortly after the battle ends, a timer indicating how long to the next battle is shown both in the ruins and in the Adventure Finder. When the time of the apparition of Xarakk is close, the time changes to a "Smoke rises in the ruins", and once the event begins to: "Battle rages in the ruins". Once the timer changes, any character at the circle of obelisks in the ruins will begin to notice a gentle breeze, then a chilling one. After that a thin column of smoke will appear, and after that a thick one, several thick ones and at last the Greater Demon Xarakk. That screen refreshes automatically each minute until the battle begins, so you can wait quietly for the demon to appear without having to check repeatedly. Engagements and health When you approach the battle, you must roll a random number to get near Xarakk undetected. Thievery (x 0.25), Woodsmanship (x0.25), Luck (x0.5), Mind (x0.5), Agility (x1) and Body (x1) help you. You must roll at least 100. If you don't reach 100, the demon launches an attack. You can use Elementalism (50+), Fortification (50+), Shadow Magic (50+) or try to dodge (you won't get xp for any chosen option). To dodge, you roll another random number. Agility (x1), Luck(x0,5), and Mind (x1) will help. You must get 75. If you fail, you'll lose some SP, from 7 to nearly 50. Once past this obstacle, you might or might not encounter another obstacle: a creature emerging from a random Shadow Path that opens near the demon. You can encounter: * * * * 3 Skeletal Guardians At last, you reach the mighty demon. Unless your MR without the +40 bonus vs demons is around 160, you'll see him black. You can engage him for several rounds. Then you will be forced to retreat, and wait a pause of 20 seconds before engaging the demon again. The number of rounds started being 8, fixed, then a random number between 7 and 13, then again increased to be from 15 to 21 rounds of combat. You can go down to the resting spot before engaging the demon again, if you have a fast connection you'll be able to rest for 5 or 10 seconds, go back and still have a couple of spare seconds to wait. It also helps to cast Restoration once or twice while resting to speed things up and save a little time. The fight goes on like that, engagement after engagement, until one of the adventurers present scores the killing blow. Then the battle is over. During the battle you'll be able to see Xarakk's current health descriptively in the circle of obelisks and just before each engagement. The levels of health are: * Relatively unscathed * Only slightly wounded * Only moderately wounded * Wounded * Substantially Wounded * Heavily wounded * Severely wounded * Critically wounded * Near death * Hovering on death's doorstep Attacks of Xarakk The greater demon has several normal attacks. Each of these will deal the usual Combat damage, based on your roll. * The massive, black-winged demon swipes at you with its clawed hand * Xarakk roars as he stomps at you with his massive, clawed foot * Xarakk bellows with rage as he reaches out for you with his fiery grasp Also, Xarakk can (and will, frequently) use several strong powers: * You suddenly feel drained... Xarakk has siphoned away some of your Nevernal Reserve... (2-6 NV) * Xarakk turns his haunting gaze toward you and you feel your life force rapidly draining away... * Xarakk thrusts his clawed hand toward you and a broad arc of black lightning leaps through the air, striking you squarely in the chest... ** You're unable to resist the attack. - you can take as much as 123 damage ** You manage to resist the worst of the attack. * Xarakk turns his chilling gaze upon you and you feel your every nerve begin to tingle... ** You've been paralyzed by Xarakk and will be unable to act during the next round of combat. ** You manage to resist the demon's attempt to paralyze you. It's still unclear if some of these special attacks have any other effects besides hurting you. It's been suggested that Xarakk heals himself with the life force that he drains from adventurers. To confirm or to refute this affirmation is nearly impossible to determine. The damage you can receive from these specials range roughly from 40 to 64, halved if you manage to resist the worst of the attack. Consequently, you must remain very, very vigilant of your SP. You can flee from the battle, from the fourth round onwards. If you flee you appear directly on the rest spot. The damage you score against the demon stays registered even if you flee or die. Various facts * Xarakk has variable MR, SP, and special attacks. MR is around 9+ at MR 166, but varies up to 10 points more than that. Even in the same battle, it changes between encounters. * When there are many adventurers, Xarakk's SP rises. The base value is about 50000 SP, but there are reports up to 110000 SP. * Powers seem to fizzle more often than normal, but as it's a long battle and powers get used often, could be an observer bias. * Occasionally, Xarakk will not attack during a single combat round, and you will see this text: Faced with another immediate threat, your enemy momentarily ignores you... This occurs even if you are fighting him solo. Known bugs * If Xarakk deals enough damage to kill you (most probably with a powerful special attack) on the same round you are forced to retreat, your health will not be taken into account, so you can retreat from the engagement with negative SP. * In rare occurrences, Xarakk may die before time, even if he had more than half his SP left. The GM is usually so kind as to reset the timer and let the adventurers repeat the battle, leaving untouched the rewards given for the short battle. Experience rewards We are still collecting data about EXP given by Xarakk in the Ruins of Tarramyre thread in the forum. The character who deals the killing blow gets 256 General XP and 128 XP to all skills and powers. This amount is fixed, and has not changed since the first installment of the scenario. All characters who participate in the battle receive some amount of General XP in the "windowless building with the blue door" in Hawklor, Talinus, or Trithik. This amount has been subject to several changes, but is believed to be a minimum of 64 XP, only for showing up, and then onwards it depends on how much damage you dealt (in percentage of the total SP of the demon). Correlations established so far are: * The absolute minimum you can get is 64 EXP (but you must have dealt at least 1 point of damage for this) * The maximum reward reported was 2016 EXP * It seems that the SP Xarakk has, the number of adventurers involved in the battle, and the duration of it, DON'T affect the rewards. * All EXP rewards are sums of powers of 2, from 2^5 (32) to 2^10 (1024). It IS possible, in theory, to get more, if an adventurer killed the demon alone or with little help. * Rewards vary with each battle, but remain coherent among participants in the same battle. * When the battle is finished, the total SP of the demon is compared to the damages scored. Let's suppose Xarakk's SP was 50000. Adventurer A scored 10000 damage, and adventurer B scored 5000, so A dealt 20% of damage, and B dealt 10%. Percentages are rounded to the nearest integer, so if you deal 1,51% and I deal 2,49%, we'll both get the same EXP (corresponding to 2%), but if you deal 1,49% (rounds to 1%) and I deal 1,51% (rounds to 2%), I'll get more. * There is an unknown factor, decided for each battle, which ranges from 15 to 80 in the reports analyzed, that determines how much EXP is awarded for each 1% of damage. That value is multiplied for the percentage of damage each adventurer scored to establish his/her reward. Then the value is assigned to the nearest integer multiple of 32, and that's the amount of EXP the adventurer gets. If the result is lower than 64, the reward is defaulted to 64XP. If the factor is, for example, 45, an adventurer who scores a 13% of damage gets (45*13=585), rounded to the nearest multiple of 32 (576) EXP. * The rules for that "Rounding to nearest multiple of 32" are simple: Each multiple of 32 gets assigned 32 values: from itself-16 to itself +15. So, for example, rewards from 80 to 111 are resolved to 96 XP. Item rewards During the successive engagements, after each time you retreat from the battle, there is a chance that you may find one of three special weapons available only in the Ruins of Tarramyre. No special action is needed to receive them in your inventory. The drop rates are not clear, but usually you need to participate in several battles to get each item, although there are reports of receiving several items in the same battle. Whenever you get an item, it's extremely recommended you exit the ruins and save. You can use the opportunity to rest, too. EDIT: 9/22/09 - An adventurer has received all three items on her first run. EDIT: And all three rings. 12/21/10 - An adventurer has received all three items on her first run, after about 7 fights, while the demon was still at 80%. 4/05/2011 - Hat-trick confirmed once more: all three weapons received on the very first run. Iron weapons of Tarramyre These weapons are undroppable. Once you get the three of them, you can take them to the stone building to the west of the ruins (marked red, Hall of the Three Knights), where you'll be able to transform them into a powerful item, the Finger of Dread. You'll have to be a Master (skill 70) on two of the weapons (Sword, Axe, Staff) - Train your weaponry. The Finger of Dread Example of a fight (2 minutes) * < 1 minute ago ... Stormdancer, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon her mastery of (Shadow Magic) dealt 61 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight moderately wounded.... * < 1 minute ago ... Kieran, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon his mastery of (Necromancy ,Shadow Magic) dealt 121 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight severely wounded.... * < 1 minute ago ... AerylSilverheels, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 190 points of damage to Xarakk and escaped the fight unscathed.... * < 1 minute ago ... Tamril, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon her mastery of (Shadow Magic) dealt 175 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight slightly wounded.... * < 1 minute ago ... Sigurd, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 125 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight severely wounded... * < 1 minute ago ... Krylinym was slain in combat by Xarakk. * < 1 minute ago ... Presto, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 153 points of damage to Xarakk, but had to flee from combat... * < 1 minute ago ... Ares, wielding (Shimmering Silver Longsword) dealt 144 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight severely wounded.... * < 1 minute ago ... Shadowblack, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon his mastery of (Gating ,Necromancy) dealt 302 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight moderately wounded... * < 1 minute ago ... Dragonbane, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon his mastery of (Necromancy) dealt 149 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight moderately wounded.... * 1 minute ago ... Kieran, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon his mastery of (Necromancy ,Shadow Magic) dealt 206 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight heavily wounded.... * 1 minute ago ... AerylSilverheels, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 211 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight moderately wounded.... * 1 minute ago ... Stormdancer, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon her mastery of (Shadow Magic) dealt 147 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight moderately wounded.... * 1 minute ago ... Minnow, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 158 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight moderately wounded.... * 1 minute ago ... Sigurd, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 168 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight slightly wounded.... * 1 minute ago ... AerylSilverheels, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 173 points of damage to Xarakk and escaped the fight unscathed.... * 1 minute ago ... Dragonbane, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon his mastery of (Necromancy) dealt 207 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight slightly wounded.... * 2 minutes ago ... Tamril, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon her mastery of (Shadow Magic) dealt 97 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight moderately wounded.... * 2 minutes ago ... Shadowblack, wielding (The Demonscourge) and calling upon his mastery of (Gating ,Necromancy) dealt 171 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight severely wounded.... * 2 minutes ago ... AerylSilverheels, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 172 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight slightly wounded.... * 2 minutes ago ... Sigurd, wielding (The Demonscourge) dealt 87 points of damage to Xarakk and left the fight slightly wounded.... Fights with Xarakk usually take from 30 minutes to a little more than an hour (but when there are few adventurers present, they can reach two hours). In this example you can see how the game reports the status and achievements of the other characters as they fight, remarking also on the adventurers slain and the ones who fled from combat.